Cristina Odone is a journalist, novelist and broadcaster specialising in the relationship between society, families and faith. She is the director of communications for the Legatum institute and is a former editor of the Catholic Herald and deputy editor of the New Statesman. She is married and lives in west London with her husband, two stepsons and a daughter. Her new ebook No God Zone is now available on Kindle.

A boom in mums over 40? That's good news for their children

I was an "elderly prima gravide". That was the technical term – not a swipe made by some cheeky junior doctor when looking at my records – because I was 42 when I got pregnant. Relatives were scandalised, friends concerned, and one colleague warned me that I would have to learn to put up with gaffes about "how sweet your grand-daughter looks" when I pushed my pram. Women just didn't have babies in their 40s.

They were all wrong. By the time Isabella was born, I was not an exception. At the school gates I caught sight of a couple of women who could be just about my age. Then, in my neighbourhood, I began to notice 40 plus year-olds sat at Starbucks with push-chairs. Now, three times as many babies are born to women over 40 than 20 years ago.

Lucky children, is all I can say. Lucky because, by the time you're 40, having a baby is either an extraordinary gift from God, or a hard-won IVF battle against infertility. (About 40,000 women a year undergo fertility treatments in the UK, and most of them are over 40.) You cherish that child you've dreamed of having for so many years, and can never take them for granted.

Which is why their children have a huge advantage over others. They will never have the unsettling, unhappy experience, so common among children of 20 year-olds, of seeing Mum lash out over nothing because she's at the end of her tether. They don't get ignored because Mum, young and terrified of her responsibility, doesn't know what her life is about, and doesn't know how to seek help.

Mum in her 40s knows who she is, knows who she wants to be with, and is pretty settled – financially, professionally, above all emotionally. She doesn't need a baby to love her, or to live vicariously through her child. In fact, she doesn't need a baby at all. She just loves it to bits.

This is not to say that all women should wait until their 40s to have children. They risk infertility, and twice as many miscarriages as a younger woman. The risk of Down's Syndrome increases with the mother's age: it is one in 1667 births when she is 20, but one in 67 when she is 42.

But if you are lucky enough to have a baby in your 40s, they are lucky to have you, too.